I'm pretty sure the box didn't promise you would be able to get into a raiding guild on every server etc. You are still able to play the game, the game still works whatever server you are on. Blizzard can't take responsibility for the player community.

- - - Updated - - -

I think he's lying if he says he doesn't have ~€20 he can spend on whatever he wants each month.

Low-pop, dead servers are Blizzard's problem, not a player's problem. They want everyone to enjoy the game because that's how you retain customers. It's in their best interest.

I swear, if half the people commenting in this thread about "whiny" players who can't gear up at a reasonable pace had anything to do with the administration/design of this game WoW would have been dead a long time ago.

Low-pop, dead servers are Blizzard's problem, not a player's problem. They want everyone to enjoy the game because that's how you retain customers. It's in their best interest.

Well it's both actually since it's the players that suffer from a dead server and only if they quit the game does it become blizzard's problem. But the fact that something effects you does not mean that it is your responsibility.

Well it's both actually since it's the players that suffer from a dead server and only if they quit the game does it become blizzard's problem. But the fact that something effects you does not mean that it is your responsibility.

You're just arguing semantics now. Fanboy all you want, but your attitude does not make the game better. Toxic Community Example #3.

Blizzard's Virtual Realms might help with the problem, but honestly, they need a lot more than that. One place to start would be permanently removing all combat-related racials. Of course they are still completely indecisive on doing so, and considering it's already too late, the longer they wait the more they will need to do to reverse the long-term imbalances and playerbase losses it has and will continue to cause.

Blizzard's Virtual Realms might help with the problem, but honestly, they need a lot more than that. One place to start would be permanently removing all combat-related racials. Of course they are still completely indecisive on doing so, and considering it's already too late, the longer they wait the more they will need to do to reverse the long-term imbalances and playerbase losses it has and will continue to cause.

I'm not convinced racials are the main cause for the imbalance.
Also, I think racials should be treated like birth signs in Morrowind, where you can pick a set of those regardless of your race. This would allow us to keep racials that actually mean something besides cosmetic stuff.

I'm not convinced racials are the main cause for the imbalance.
Also, I think racials should be treated like birth signs in Morrowind, where you can pick a set of those regardless of your race. This would allow us to keep racials that actually mean something besides cosmetic stuff.

They are whether people admit it or not. Again it has nothing to do with whether you specifically like racials or not, but as soon as the majority of the playerbase shifts to a faction whether due to racials or lore reasons, even removing the racials and "equalizing" the lore will have no more effect. Due to balance alone, people will be forced even more so to move to the "more dominant" side if anything for want of recruits.

They are whether people admit it or not. Again it has nothing to do with whether you specifically like racials or not, but as soon as the majority of the playerbase shifts to a faction whether due to racials or lore reasons, even removing the racials and "equalizing" the lore will have no more effect. Due to balance alone, people will be forced even more so to move to the "more dominant" side if anything for want of recruits.

This holds for World First down to even semi-hardcore guilds.

I don't think most of the playerbase even has them as a serious consideration. Most players couldn't care less that one racial provides a fraction more DPS for their class because most of them couldn't really care less about raiding or serious PvP. I imagine the human population has a slight overall population boost due to EMFH as the trolls will have one because of Beserking, but I can't imagine those numbers being any sort of meaningful contributor to the present situation.
It's quite simple why we have this situation. We have a server infrastructure which is supposed to house over twice the number of players (the low pop realm problem was very evident during the game's peak of 12mil during WotLK) leaving populations to have a diverse range of sizes. Over the years, players have gravitated away from the lower and even mid populated servers to cluster in the few high pop servers.

I don't think most of the playerbase even has them as a serious consideration. Most players couldn't care less that one racial provides a fraction more DPS for their class because most of them couldn't really care less about raiding or serious PvP. I imagine the human population has a slight overall population boost due to EMFH as the trolls will have one because of Beserking, but I can't imagine those numbers being any sort of meaningful contributor to the present situation.

It actually does matter... a lot. Yes, most players may not care, but when a significant population do, then the rest of the players are forced to care due to diminished recruitment capabilities. Take a look at some of the statement of Alliance guilds in ToT (one of the worst offending imbalanced racial raids), both those that stayed Alliance despite a strong push from within guild to transfer, and those who were forced to transfer to Horde.

Again this is why it affects the World First level (method switching)... but will even bleed down to far more casual raiding guilds, down to even possibly semi-hardcore guilds. The latter may not give a shit that Troll is not 1% but rather like 10% more DPS... but they'll care that they have no recruits.

The QQers will come up with something to whine about I'm sure since they don't have dailies to bitch about anymore.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Ghoulthaz

Bullshit. I've been doing heroic scenarios and running LFR constantly and i'm sitting on 511 on my mage and 510 on my prot pala. How the hell would you even be able to get 530 ilv without having luck? I barely get items from HC scenarios or LFR, so saying that i'm doing something wrong isn't really all that helpful when i'm doing all i can.

By buying valor gear maybe? Crafting the 522 pieces? There is more to end game than heroic scenarios and LFR. Also there is the valor upgrade npc and the 2 new world bosses that were added in 5.2 that drop 522 gear. Then there is the fact many realms are able to pug parts of normal ToT now. Basically there is ZERO excuse for why players can't get geared up unless they are stubbornly avoiding the very content that has the upgrades they need.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by voidspark

"In a day" is exaggeration, but the short answer is yes: People left because they weren't able to gear out alts in a month.

And falling behind on your main (say, perhaps because you couldn't do 29 dailies every day - more than the old cap before MOP!) meant a long, painful catch up, so why the fuck even bother at that point? Needless to also point out, no alts = no trade/alt runs where your main can catch up, so you were perma fucked.

Dailies haven't been an "issue" since 5.2. Why are people still bitching about them? I mean really most of this stuff was addressed well over 6 months ago. It is time to let it go already.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by voidspark

Stormrage is simply one of the, if not the, biggest servers in the US (its population is higher than Illidan now). Being told "pay even more money to transfer your character" or "get fucked"... I guess some people just chose to quit also.

And yes, 520 is hardly what I would call geared, it's not even normal item level. LFR is dropping higher than 528 next patch. The gear from almost all sources is honestly laughable before 5.4, the fact that 496 gear is baseline only now is quite honestly pathetic. You had 2 options for gearing your characters for ToT (besides ToT): LFR, and Valor gear. LFR is RNG-based, Valor Gear is slower than shit with their new system. Literally the other gear you can get, besides 516 blue-moon daily-bag gear, is just crap.

What on earth are you talking about? Normal ToT isn't tuned around having all 522 gear. The current gear available now is far from "laughable". Are you people really that desperate for complaints that you have to make complete bullshit up?

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by zephid

You don't have to transfer several characters at once. Start with your main since that is the one you want to get into a raiding guild. Alts can be transferred at a later date.

Don't even bother. The people who endlessly whine about having to gear an army of alts isn't going to consider for a second that they don't need to transfer entire said army to a new realm.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Nerraw

As a student with no side job I don't really have that kind of spare money.

This is a rather shaky argument considering this is a subscription based game at $15 a month with $40 expansions coming out every 2 years or so.

While it DOES seem to be accurate (Blizzard is making T14 pretty much redundant at this point, akin to how the HoT 5 mans made T11 redundant) to get 496s so commonly, the gear aim for the island is 535 pieces, which can take a month to get a full set of.

Also, I'm seeing a whole bunch of alt complaints on this server, and I ask, what is your opinion of "geared" and how many alts do you feel should be "geared". If geared is 530 ilvl on 5+ alts, you have a pretty skewed vision of alts. Imo, having 2-3 alts at 500+ ilvl (about the average ilvl guilds enter ToT with) should be plenty of gear, and that amount of gear is easily obtainable with H Scenarios+LFR. Now, if you are comparing THIS tiers ilvl to next tiers ilvl, you are also skewing it a bit. After all, what happens in the future has no effect on what happened in the past.

Anyone ever notice how the sun seems to shine silverish now? Didn't it used to shine goldish? PM me if you've noticed this.

Bullshit. I've been doing heroic scenarios and running LFR constantly and i'm sitting on 511 on my mage and 510 on my prot pala. How the hell would you even be able to get 530 ilv without having luck? I barely get items from HC scenarios or LFR, so saying that i'm doing something wrong isn't really all that helpful when i'm doing all i can.

hmmm...you may be doing something wrong then . you can get ten pieces of 522 gear from the valor quartermaster (wrists, ring, hands, chest, trinket, legs, waist, neck, back, and shoulders)which upgrades into 530.

So, assuming you get all the valor gear you can (lets say you get 7 -- say you skip on hands, chest, and legs so you can get your 4 piece set bonus) and the rest of your slots are filled with LFR gear (that would be 10 slots) your gear level would be

(7*530 + 9 * 510) / 16

or 518 as an average item level, assuming you upgraded every piece twice. Granted it is not 530, but it is not quite a bleak as you make it out. If you don't care about set bonuses you can easily break 520.

"You give us money, we give you content" -- Russ Brown, VP of Developement for Rift
Something some MMO companies seem to have forgotten.

Most people expect that when they purchase the game for $60 (all expansions) and pay their $180 per year, that they will actually be able to play? That's at least what the box reads?

Now having to realize "Oh shit, I picked the wrong server and it's a pile of shit" and Blizzard then saying "well you can't play now, but you can play if you pay another $25" isn't a very good feeling.

- - - Updated - - -

Which was my point all along... that's what people did. In your words, "GG"

I don't give a fuck what the box says. In fact the box even flat out states that your gaming experience may vary due to being an online game. This is one of those variances.

I'm not even on a raid team. The only time I raid is in pugs...guess it might be a server problem but I've cleared normal multiple times and killed a few heroics all in pugs. I only play 2 nights a week and my lock is 530 and my holy paly is 520. I stopped upgrading their gear a couple weeks ago to cap valor for 5.4. Maybe you should look into US Stormrage...great server for raiding pugs.

It could well be a server issue (or a faction issue). On my server I've never seen a pug raid forming, I would have to say that LFR has fairly well killed pug raids on my server. Hell, I haven't even seen pugs for the previous tier content.

On a night where my raid is down a person, it is a struggle sometimes just to find a stand-in for one night.

"You give us money, we give you content" -- Russ Brown, VP of Developement for Rift
Something some MMO companies seem to have forgotten.

Sad because these alt friendly changes really had to be here about oh.... 6 months ago... but better late than never I guess. Hope they can get back at least some of the numerous subs/player-base they lost.

Yes, because people were canceling in droves because their alts couldn't get gear.

It actually does matter... a lot. Yes, most players may not care, but when a significant population do, then the rest of the players are forced to care due to diminished recruitment capabilities. Take a look at some of the statement of Alliance guilds in ToT (one of the worst offending imbalanced racial raids), both those that stayed Alliance despite a strong push from within guild to transfer, and those who were forced to transfer to Horde.

Sad because these alt friendly changes really had to be here about oh.... 6 months ago...

That definitely would have kept me subbed.

Spit on me all you want, but I loathe the gear-up process and just want to jump in. Trial of the Champnion / Frozen Halls / Hour of Twilight model of fast-forward gearing was appealing to me because it was quick, painless, and led straight to the current content.

MoP's "Let's party like it's TBC!" (except worse) gearing model was a complete turn-off because, well, it's not TBC any more and gating the "real" content behind tons of quaint but tiresome dailies (etc.) doesn't work in 2013. Not for me, at least.

I actually shed a genuine tear when old content becomes spontaneously obsolete, so I appreciate what the devs tried to do. But IMO, it just didn't work in a faster-paced, modernized MMO/gaming/IRL environment of the current day.

I think the newer idea of making old content stay relevant because it scales and is rewarding to play is the correct path, rather than because you're forced to retread it due to a rigidly linear gearing design.

It's not their responsibility because they didn't create the population imbalance. It's not Blizzards fault that people wants to play on certain realms because certain guilds happen to play on those servers. That was what created the imbalance to begin with. Fanboys migrated/rerolled on the servers the top guilds played on because they wanted to stand in OG/IF and admire their heroes.

Yes. Blizzard might be able to do something about the realm population problem (hopefully connected realms will work out well), but Blizzard didn't create that problem. That part's all on the players.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Lovestar

That definitely would have kept me subbed.

Spit on me all you want, but I loathe the gear-up process and just want to jump in. Trial of the Champnion / Frozen Halls / Hour of Twilight model of fast-forward gearing was appealing to me because it was quick, painless, and led straight to the current content.

I don't think there was any value at all in the idea of "respecting" players who had completed a tier by making it more difficult for new or returning players to gear up for the following tier.

I understand the logic, but I think GC and the rest of the design team is just stroking egos that don't need to be stroked by making it difficult to get caught up.